Saturday

SOMEONE ASKED me that question today and I said "no." He said, "Why do you say that?" I said, "I don't have enough time to give you a full answer, and a short answer wouldn't be very good."

A woman sitting nearby said, "I think it should be allowed. After all, just because Muslims flew the planes into the Twin Towers doesn't mean all Muslims are bad."

The man added his two cents. "I believe in freedom of religion," he said, turning to me, "Okay, tell me this. What do you think about the internment camps in World War Two?"

I said, "I think they were wrong."

"Why?" he asked, "Isn't stopping the mosque the same thing?"

For once in my life I spontaneously came up with a good answer at the time rather than ten minutes later. I said, "No it isn't, because the Japanese-Americans they put in the internment camps did not have the same ideology as the Japanese who attacked America. The Japanese war machine was driven by a militaristic, imperialist, expansionist Shinto ideology. Almost none of the Americans placed in internment camps had those beliefs.

"That's really the question, isn't it?" I said. "Will the people who run the mosque share the same ideology and the same goals as those who flew the planes into the buildings? If they do, I think we would both agree they should not be allowed to build the mosque. And if they don't have the same ideology or goals, I think we can agree they should be allowed to build it.

He was just staring at me now. This was obviously a much better argument than he expected, and he had nothing left to say. So I kept going. "So now the question is: If something being preached is seditious, but it's part of a religious doctrine, which law should trump which? Should preaching and promoting the sabotage, undermining, and overthrow of U.S. laws and the U.S. government be protected by the right to freedom of religion?"

Luckily for him, we were interrupted by someone, and he had to go take care of something. But I was thinking about it afterwards. This mosque controversy is a great opportunity for us to awaken more people to the basic teachings of Islam. This issue pivots around the central question: What is the ideology of Muslims in general? If it's peaceful like they say it is, then okay, build the mosque because Islam had nothing to do with 9/11.

But if Islam is inherently political, supremacist, imperialistic, and intolerant — if that's really a core, mainstream, inseparable part of Islamic doctrine — then what do we do? That's really the question we should be asking. This issue helps us push conversations into two important questions. First, what is the ideology of Islam?

And second, if this is true (that Islam is inherently political, supremacist, imperialistic, and intolerant), what should we do about it? I think Robert Spencer has a possible answer. Read it here.

When the guy I was talking to earlier came back from his errand, I told him about Spencer's idea, and he saw the sense in it. And he seemed to also understand that it makes sense not to build more mosques — especially at Ground Zero — until we have some sort of solution to the more fundamental problem.

1 comments:

I have been activley promoting the Ground Zero mosque protest. More specifically the Ground Zero Transportation Exchanges' Stars and Stripes Caravan. My wish of wishes would be to tap into that 70+% dissaproval rate and have the biggest cross country caravan in history. Bigger than the westward expansion. We have forgotten how to make a statement as a country, we have forgotten to first defend ourselves and our families, I hope this caravan will reignite the American spirit. We need vast numbers of active participants to join in our caravan not only for impressive numbers but for safety. We will be picking up fellow Americans on the way, and are putting a great deal of faith in everyone having pure intentions. The more numbers we have, the safer our caravan will be, We can check on each other and maintain safety through numbers. Please help us promote our cause, These are some of the links where information can be found. You can also reach Kellie at starsandstripescaravan@yahoo.comhttp://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=110841015612178http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=124674177543698&index=1http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=112502342135070http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=143622362325508&index=1

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Some people say Islam is a religion of peace and that Islam has been hijacked by extremists, terrorists, and stealth jihadists who twist and distort the peaceful teachings of the Quran and quote it out of context.

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Article Spotlight

It illustrates the Islamic Supremacist vision by showing the similarity between what happened in the movie, Pleasantville, and what devout fundamentalist Muslims are trying to create in Islamic states like Syria, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia (and ultimately everywhere in the world).